Checking the boxes

Penny and I were in touch the other day with a friend, Andrew Hazelden, who makes marvellous pottery and is also interested in moths. He now has a studio at Bradfield in Berkshire but he used to work in Yarnton, a couple of miles from here, where he turned the dull hues of slip clay into glowing colours.

We wrote to thank him after buying a jar with a very appealing owl, a bird which has been of great fascination successively to our three grandchildren when small. Back came a nice reply, complete with a picture he had painted of another and more eminent moth-ing friend of his, David Lees of the Natural History Museum.

I'm grateful for Andrew's permission to show it here because it exactly sums up how I feel in the mornings in high Summer when examining my catch. I wonder if David ever has assistance like mine this week, however. Our cat Taco has taken a sudden 9 but fortunately harmless) interest in what I am up to.

Dr Lees' work as an expert on moths and butterflies is fascinating and there is an interesting example here about a detailed re-examination of a 'dusty old moth' at the museum collected by Alfred Russell Wallace which led to the discovery of 11 new species, one of which has been named after the climate activist Greta Thunberg. 

My own activities have been prospering in a more modest way with the repeated arrival of examples of one of my favourite species, the Black Arches. This one allowed me to show a glimpse of its pink body hidden beneath the black-and-white dazzle pattern of the wings. As you can see, Taco also took a benevolent interest. Curiosity did not kill the moth.

Here's the dazzle, below, an exquisitely delicate pattern which disguises the moth's shape by disorientating the observer's eye. I always add the rider to this that it has that effect on human eyes. We would have to ask Dr Lees if he thinks that birds and other predators are affected in the same way. You can contrast the pattern, the standard version, with the interestingly different, smudged version of the moth which visited me the other day and appeared in this previous post.

I'll just end with a few more arrivals, to try and keep pace with these very busy times. Here is a Yellowtail, curling up defensively and showing the reason for its name, a warning flash of gold which may also be a sexual attraction device, given where it is on the moth's body.  You may remember the other example which came recently but kept its glories concealed - second picture below. 

Plus a Scalloped Oak with the banana-coloured micro Agapeta hamana or the Common Yellow Conch, a Common or Lesser Common Rustic, a Red Twin-spot Carpet and a Dusky Thorn. On we go!